Parkland survivors fight for harsher gun laws

On February 14, 2018, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida suffered many tragedies when an armed former student killed 17 people with an AR-15. As the students, faculty, staff and others mourn these tragic losses, many of the students are creating a movement.

Survivors of the Parkland are planning a “March for Their Lives” in Washington DC on March 24. This march is to put forth effort to convince lawmakers to make a change to the current gun laws.

“It should not be harder for me to get this girl in fourth period to call me back than it is to get an AR15,” Parkland student Cameron Kasky told TIME.

The main goal for the walkout is to ensure that this never happens again. The students have also started using the hashtag #neveragain to highlight the events.

Emma Gonzalez, Parkland senior, gave an 11-minute speech at an anti-gun rally in Fort Lauderdale two days after the shooting, and has become one of the country’s most visible gun violence prevention activists because of it.

“We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks,” Gonzalez said. “Not because we’re going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because … we are going to be the last mass shooting”

She added that Marjory Stoneman Douglas will be in that textbook due to the tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most of all the students.

The commitment to creating better gun laws that so many of the students have showed since the shooting is simply inspiring. And they are right, there need to be stricter gun laws. I’m not saying guns should be taken away from law-abiding citizens, but no one really needs an AR-15- or any assault rifle for that matter. Take them away. People locked up Tide Pods when kids started eating those and getting sick, so why not lock up the assault rifles that are killing children too?

Students should not have to worry if today will be a day that their school is “shot up.” So why is not more being done to ensure the safety of students? @MrFilmkritik on Twitter tweeted, “You know, when I said I wanted the real world to be more like Harry Potter I just meant the teleportation and the magic stuff, not the entire plot of book 5 where the government refuses to do anything about a deadly threat so the teenagers have to rise up and fight back.” This tweet sums up the problem at hand. The Parkland survivors are doing admirable things – taking matters into their own hands.